One of Britain’s most notorious killers who spent time on the run in Norfolk after committing three murders is to be featured on a new TV documentary.

Joanna Dennehy was sentenced to life in prison after she admitted murdering three men whose bodies were dumped in ditches across the Fens and north Cambridgeshire in March 2013.

Dennehy’s crimes, which also include the attempted murders of another two men, will come under the spotlight as part of Channnel 5 documentary Joanna Dennehy: Killing for Kicks.

The show, which airs at 9pm on Thursday, July 27, profiles the killer and takes an in depth look at the killings of Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, Kevin Lee, 48, and John Chapman, 56.

The murder spree prompted police to launch a nationwide hunt for Dennehy who spent time in Norfolk with her accomplice Gary Stretch over the Easter weekend following the killings.

Detective Chief Inspector Martin Brunning, the man who led the murder investigation, wrote to Norfolk’s chief constable to express his gratitude in relation a call he received from an officer about a potential sighting of Dennehy.

The Norfolk officer told murder squad detectives that they had CCTV footage from a theft at a petrol station at Aylmerton of a woman who, like Dennehy, had a distinctive tattoo on her face.

Det Chief Insp Brunning said: “He gave me the registration number and we then formally linked that vehicle and the one Dennehy and Stretch had been on the run in.”

“It was that massively important phone call from a PC at North Walsham who said ‘I’ve got this registration, what do you think?’ We took that back to the incident room and it proved to be the vehicle. We knew from intelligence that the vehicle was already travelling towards Worcestershire.”

He said the significance of that call was that they then knew where she was and were able to inform colleagues in West Mercia police who then apprehended her after she had repeatedly stabbed two dog walkers in Hereford.

Dennehy became the first woman in the UK to be ordered to die in prison when she was jailed in February 2014 after being sentenced by Mr Justice Spencer. He described her as a “cruel, calculating, selfish and manipulative serial killer”.